Slow Path
by esama
Summary: If changing the history was impossible, the Department of Mysteries wouldn't bother to send Unspeakables to hunt time travellers down. Au, timetravel with ooc Harry. Character deaths.


Warnings; Au with oocness and angsty/depressed/indifferent/slightlysociopathic and darkish Harry. Death of characters, time travel, possibly crossover, maybe not.**  
**

**Slow path**

Harry spends four days preparing.

The first day he packs. First the essentials – and those take the longest because he doesn't _have_ them, he has to have them made. Everything from bags and suitcases to shoes to jackets to hats – and apparently there has to be a hat – to toiletries, handkerchiefs, glasses to simple personal effects like photographs and mementos from friends and family. Some are altered, like the photos, made older and simpler and authentic by a talented forger. He has a couple of paintings made from couple of photographs, just because it feels like a thing to do – the paintings will never move, but that's beside the point.

He packs a case full of shrunken books – he has most of them made, charmed and written and manufactured just for him, to his specifications. He packs other more obscure things like tools of this and that sort, with layer of medicine bottles and bags and jars on top. Harry finishes his packing by having most of his money turned into unmarked gold bars.

The second day he visits everyone he knows, everyone who's still left. Friendships have frayed in the last ten years, but there are some he still wants to say good bye to, to explain. Most of them don't understand, and he can't explain, all they will know that he is going away and never coming back. They feel betrayed, they feel like he's playing a cruel joke on them and, worst of all, they feel he's being selfish and uncaring and only thinking for himself and no one. Can't he see how sad he will make people?

And still they don't really get the fact that when he goes he will be just that, _gone_, and try to extract promises of letters and calls and visits. Worst are those who simply don't do any of that, who look at him, and actually understand, actually get it – and most of all the reasons behind it.

The third day is spent with legalities. Harry is leaving behind lot of things that will after he's gone have no owner. He can't take some things with him, like the number 12 Grimmauld place, or Godric's Hollow estate or his vault – not to mention about other, more delicate things like the Wizengamot seats he has never touched and the obscure matter of the rights of his biography, which he still has withheld from the many people who would very much like to write his story.

He writes his will, because it is easier than trying to hand it all away when he's still officially alive, and Grimmauld Place goes to the Weasleys, Teddy inherits what's left in his vault plus the Godric's Hollow estate, while Kingsley Shacklebolt gets the right to do whatever he wants with the Wizengamot seat, and Xenophilius Lovegood and Luna Scarmander get the rights of his biography – along with whatever materials he has that they might need to write the story in whatever way they fancied. He finishes the day with trip to St. Mungos, where they magically and irreversibly sterilise him – not exactly a legal issue, but very important one in any case.

The final day Harry sits alone in front of the fireplace of the house that was never really his, and he holds a quiet wake for himself with a glass of some nameless alcohol Kreacher had produced to him. He thinks back to the other wakes he has held in solitude – Cedric, Sirius, Dumbledore, Hedwig, Ron, Hermione… and he looks down to the file his unseen employer has already produced. His own death certificate.

Harry Potter will die the following day in a spell accident. In hindsight, it is revealed that he is – was, by then it will be _was_ – an Unspeakable and a spell creator under the employment of the Department of Mysteries, an inventor of no small skill. He will be credited several advances posthumously and year from his _death_ his employer will arrange the posthumous publication of Harry's "unfinished" projects, which include many useful and so far unpredicted spells. He will be hallowed as a hero once more, while those spells he supposedly created will, in reality, come from several dozen different spell researchers working in the Department of Mysteries who will never be named because it is simply safer to credit incredible advances on a person who can't be questioned about the questionable ways they were tested and invented.

Harry can drink to that – and really, the aftertaste isn't bitter at all.

x

He meets his employer for the first and last time hour before he goes. Jenny Wilkins is a surprisingly young witch – at least five years younger than Harry – and completely unremarkable in every way. Slightly over weight woman wearing muggle clothing, with medium length blonde hair pulled to a ponytail and freckles all over her face, she doesn't look much like a witch, let alone one of the most powerful and terrifyingly intelligent ones in United Kingdom.

But that is precisely why it was someone like her and not someone like Harry who was in charge of the Department of Mysteries.

"It's been a pleasure working for you," Harry says honestly to her, as they shake hands. She has been a great employer – and he has truly enjoyed each and every case she had sent his way. He had killed and changed and transformed fact into fiction and broken more laws of people and nature than he can count, and it has been ever so much better, than it could've been if she hadn't sent her thugs to hire him.

"You've been a good operative," she answers with a small, almost shy smile which is somehow overshadowed by the sharp glint of her eyes. "You learn quick, you completely lack any sense of personal safety and your moral compass is completely shot. And you're so emotionally stunted that I could always safely send you on hunts that would have the rest of this misbegotten company whimpering. I'll miss that."

"Glad to know my boss cares for me," Harry answers, but it's a mirthless joke. He knows his value is mostly in the fact that he himself doesn't hold himself – or much anything – in value these days. There's no one better to send off on suicide missions than the one with a death wish, after all. Or something like a death wish in any case.

"Yeah," she answers with a sigh that isn't as much regretful or amused as it is just agreeing. "But we both know I'm not here to offer my platitudes," she then says and tugs her hands into her pockets. "You are aware of the fine print in this particular contract, right, Potter?"

"I am intimately familiar with it," Harry nods, glancing down to his bags. He has only two, but they had been stretched to the limits with magic and now they contained his whole life. His _new_ life. He shakes his head and smiles. "I'm aware and I'm ready."

"Hm," she hums and nods. With an almost careless nod over her shoulder, she urges him to follow and follow he does, taking his bags with him and walking right into the elaborate runic circle that that waits for him. He sets his bags down, carefully minding the lines and then stands up straight, waiting.

"Let's get the nasty business out of the way then," Wilkins says, and taps her sneaker clad foot against the stone floor. In instant answer, the runic circle flares out in golden hue, surrounding Harry at all sides while the young witch digs a somewhat crumbled note from her pocket. "Recite the mission for me, in the structure of a vow," she demands.

Harry nods. "I, Harry Potter, am tasked with the tracking of Daphne Eloise Greengrass," he began, "who has travelled back in time approximately hundred to hundred and fifty years. I will hunt down and capture Daphne Greengrass and do everything in my power to undo any potential damage she has done to the Prime Timeline. I will eventually dispose her by using means that will make no impact into the timeline."

As the circle reacts by lashing out and latching a golden chain around Harry's body Wilkins nods with satisfaction, eying her note and walking idly along the outer edge of the runic circle. "That is the easy part," she murmurs, giving him a sideways look and somewhat sardonic smile, one he agrees completely. "And then the hard part. Will you, Harry Potter, keep yourself detached from the timeline and do everything in your power to stop from interfering with the course of history?"

"Unless it is demanded by my mission, I swear to not affect the timeline or interfere with history," Harry answers, closing his eyes and knowing that this part would take a while. In reaction to his words, another chain lashes out and wraps around him, binding him to the circle tighter

"Will you swear to keep yourself from interfering with the natural chain of events of politics, economy, diplomacy or any other generally affecting manner that might have an impact on a greater magical population?"

"Unless it is demanded by my mission, I swear not to affect the chain of events in any way that might affect greater magical population."

"Will you swear not to use your knowledge of future to your benefit in either monetary, political or any other way?"

"Unless it is demanded by my mission, I swear not to use my knowledge of the future to my benefit."

"Will you swear…"

The swearing continues for a while, as Wilkins binds him with words and vows to minimize the damage he might cause. With each vow sworn, the circle lashes out, again and again until Harry is completely wrapped in golden chains of his oaths, unable to move and barely capable of breathing. With one of the last vows – not to kill anyone but the one he had been tasked with and never to reproduce – the chains grow so heavy that he falls to his knees under their weight.

"One more to go," Wilkins says with a mild smile. "Will you swear to die before the thirty first of July in nineteen eighty?"

"I swear," Harry answers – and it's not a hard vow to swear. It's unlikely his natural lifespan would even last so long.

"I accept your oaths," she says and taps the floor with her foot again. "Break a single one of them, and the runic seal will end your life."

Harry nods and grimaces, as the chains begin sinking through his tailored clothing and right into his skin, wrapping around his bones and organs and then using them as leverage to drag the seal itself inside him. It feels like wading through liquid fire, as the seal rises up his legs and thighs and sinks somewhere into his midsection until it passes his lungs and settles into his heart – from where it's power would be instantaneous.

After that, it takes moment for the after echo of the feeling to fade and then he can barely feel the seal at all. Yet he knows it is there – and will be there, until he dies.

"It's nasty business, sending an operative back in time," Wilkins sighs, offering her hand and pulling him up. "But I trust you understand why we need to be thorough. It won't do for us to stop one lunatic trying to change the timeline and have the agent send back to deal with the lunatic do all the damage for them."

"Of course," Harry nods. He understands perfectly – the lessons of one Hermione Granger, who would've made a great operative for the Department of Mysteries, have never left him.

"Well, you're lucky in a way. Twenty years ago, you wouldn't have gotten even this much leeway," Wilkins muses, patting his shoulder. "Back then we had every agent commit suicide the moment their missions were done to minimize the damage to the timeline."

"What changed?" Harry asks, curious.

"We had a dark lord running things for a year," she answers honestly and shrugs her shoulders. "I wasn't in charge back then, but my predecessor took every opportunity to test theories and perform experiments Ministers normally don't let us do. As bad as it was, the year Voldemort ran things brought just about all projects in our department forward by good ten, twenty years, thanks to the leeway he gave us. We know that the Prime Timeline is more forgiving of small mistakes than we assumed." The witch sighs. "Maybe, if they had had more time, they might've finally discovered the means to travel forward in time," she muses almost wistfully and then shakes her head.

"I see," Harry answers, and wonders if it is age or the dullness that hasn't really left him for the last ten years, that lets him hear it and think about it without feeling slightest bit of righteous anger. Voldemort's reign, as short as it had been, had been hell for most people – and yet these people had gotten advancements out of it? Once that would've made him disgusted. Now it just made sense.

"Well, no prolonging the inevitable," Wilkins muses. "You know what to do, you have the means to hunt Greengrass down and the required skill to undo the damage she's caused – and I trust you're all set for the rest of your life."

"I'm set well enough," Harry agrees with a nod, taking his bags again.

"Do you have a plan, for the afterward?" she asks curiously – not in the slightest bit worried. But then, there was no reason to be – if Harry stepped out of line, he'd be dead before he'd be able to do any damage.

"I will live out the rest of my life as a muggle," he answered with a smile that isn't as much happy as it is moderately content. Living out his live in obscurity in time where no one knew him was not maybe what he had looked for a life – but as deaths went, there was something very alluring about it. "I have enough money to manage for the rest of my life without ever working. I probably will withdraw from society as soon as I can, since fitting in might be a problem."

"Well. So as long you remember that there is a measure of flexibility there," Wilkins says, and for the first time she seems sympathetic. "We've had operatives who've made a life for themselves in the past, and lived out their time comfortably. Some have even had families, businesses – one invented a truly weird contraption and it never did any harm to the timeline. Obviously you can't have children, or world wide fame, but you can have a life."

Harry nods, thought he seriously doubts that he would bother. He hadn't bothered in this time and this life and he doesn't really see any reason why it would change in the past – which was exactly why she had asked and why he had agreed to go. "Let's get this over with," he says instead of answering the platitudes she had promised not to say, and she nods.

"Right. This way," she says, and points them out of the room. "We have the instrument prepped and ready for you."

Instrument, Harry thinks later as he is latched into the machine for transport, is a wholly wrong word for it. Instrument implied something delicate and small and the contraption he is strapped to is not remotely delicate – it reminds him more of medieval torture device mixed in with an electric chair. That, more than the reports from others who had used the monstrous device that is and isn't a Time Turner, clues him in on how much it would hurt to go back in time this time.

"We're tracking the wormhole Greengrass opened, so you will be arriving more or less the exact same day she did," one of the faceless Unspeakables says, as he wraps a belt around Harry's head. "We don't know the exact day ourselves, of course, it's hard to tell with jumps over hundred years, but you can be rest assured that your quarry will be close by."

"Well, obviously not close by – it is impossible to tell where she arrived, or where you will arrive in terms of spatial location. But the timing will be more or less accurate," another Unspeakable, this one female, says.

"More or less?" Harry asks, because those sort of repetitious phrases tend to have problems latched onto them.

"There is a margin of error of about twenty hours, so you can be twenty hours early or late," the first Unspeakable says and holds up a gag. "This'll keep you from biting your own tongue out, so. Open up."

Harry opens, and lets himself be gagged.

Ten minutes later, he nearly breaks his teeth biting into the gag in desperate attempt not to scream, as he is thrown violently backwards in time.

x

Harry has tried, for ten years, to not be depressed – ever since Ron was killed by a Death Eater whose name he had never learned and Hermione by Nagini the snake, leaving Harry to fight and end a war by himself, in fact. And it isn't, never was, just him trying to move him pass it – it was also all the people he knew and most people he didn't, random passers by and just about everyone who had ever heard the name, Harry Potter, who had tried to make him do it.

"They wouldn't want you to do this to yourself," he had told himself, as had Ron's family and Hermione's parents after he had spent a year finding them. "They would want you to move on, you know," all the members of the DA had told him, even the ones who had lost more than he had. "They wouldn't want you to waste your life like this," had said all the rest, Ginny and Kingsley and Fleur and many other people whom he had loved, back before he had lost the touch with emotion.

And they were all right, absolutely. And by Merlin he had tried. He had at first tried to make amends, by arranging the Weasley Family's affairs into order and then doing the same for Hermione's parents – before trying to do the same for everyone else who had lost something. He had faced his traumas and losses both head on and sneakily from the side, and when that hadn't worked he had talked with healers and experts and even couple of psychiatrist who were in the know about magic. After that he had tried potions and pills and he had even tried drinking.

Nothing had really helped. He had tried, though, not just to fix himself but also to maintain his friendships and relations, he had even spent months a going out with Ginny and trying to be the boy she had fallen in love with. He had tried to be kind and caring and just there for those who needed him. It hadn't made any difference, though, because he didn't really care one way or the other anymore, and anyone with eyes had been able to see through his attempts of hiding it – Ginny, despite her attempts of denial, had seen through too, and eventually left him, knowing he wouldn't miss her. And he hadn't – not her, nor the several _experiments_ he had had after her.

Year had gone by, two years, three, and he hadn't managed to feel more than vague sense of loss every now and then, and even more vague sense of content when ever things were going well or thereabouts anyway. The worst of it wasn't the resulting disregard for his own health, even if it had gone very bad at time, but the sheer indifference that seemed to follow him. Nothing had really moved him one way or the other, and while people thought he had a death wish the size of London, that wasn't really it, either. He just hadn't cared – which was perhaps his salvation as much as it was his damnation because he hadn't cared enough to bother to try and kill himself either, regardless of how indifferent of life he had became.

He still doesn't. Things had changed a bit when the Department of Mysteries had caught a glimpse of his nature and decided to put it into use, though. He still hadn't cared much one way or the other, but the chance to do something – to live up to someone else's urges and needs… it was _something._ Fairly poor substitute for a personality, true, and even poorer substitute for a caring heart, but it had been better. And for good seven years, he had been living up to the needs of other people, whether they were the need to kill or cover or spy or destroy.

It hadn't been exactly as it had been; back before his own personal great depression, but it was better than crawling forward day by day without any idea what to do next, what to bother with next.

That was what, in the end, had kept him from as much as hesitating when the folder had found itself into his hands, about Daphne Greengrass' desperate leap in time, and the necessity of dealing with it. For any other operative a trip like that, a leap of hundred years or more, is a simple suicide mission. Most operatives who went back in time didn't die of old age – they killed themselves after year or so, either by their own hand or by the seal, unable to deal with the shift or with the strict rules. For Harry, however, it had been a strange, elusive, twisted glimmer of hope.

Unlike in the present, where he lived in a sort of grey limbo when ever he had no mission and nothing concrete to do, in the past he would spend his _entire life_ on a mission. Some might've called it throwing his life away, but for him it wouldn't be because until his dying breath he would live with a purpose – even if that purpose was to be quiet and not do anything, it was definitely better than nothing.

x

Harry's first glimpse of the past – and the new world that comes with it – is a dirty, damp ground coming at him at neck breaking speed. The impact is fast and brutal, but it shakes him out of the headache induced daze that the time travelling machine had left him with, even if it doesn't do it in exactly gentle way. Groaning, he turns to his side and runs a clumsy hand along the side that had taken the impact, before testing his shoulder to make sure it hadn't dislocated the bone. He hadn't – and even his glasses are still unbroken.

It's not a most auspicious start – but then, nothing in his life had ever been. After a moment to collect himself and his thoughts, he glances around himself, sighing with slight relief as he finds himself in an empty street. Dirty and somewhat smelly street with some garbage thrown into an alcove not far from him, but still empty which was definitely better than it could've been. Having to start his time in the past with obliviates would have been maybe little too much.

With that thought, he closes his eyes for a moment, takes a deep breath, and then pushes himself up, pushing the headache and dizziness to the side and forcing back the grimace as he feels the stinging that was left behind by his fall and would no doubt become a magnificent bruise on his hip soon. It's not too bad, though – he's worked in worse state and at least this time no one's chasing him – and he manages to get to his feet without much trouble and spend a moment looking around himself, trying to get his bearings.

The street looks interesting in the same way Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade do, old and current at the same time, like out of their proper time. Except here the buildings aren't exactly like that, because they are current and not old – they only look that way because Harry is new and not used to so much grime and dirt and _style_. Back streets of London in _his_ time look mostly like the city was made of boxes. Not so much here.

It's the smell and the dirt that keys him in to the fact that he is, as of now, back in time by some uncertain amount of years and that he has pretty much no idea where he is. In London of his time it isn't just the buildings that are different, but the street itself. Here the street is made of dirt and generally dirty. There it would've been asphalt and much cleaner in comparison, down right sanitary even.

After a moment of looking and rubbing his side soothingly, he straightens his back. As interesting as the place looks, he has things to do and would have more than enough time to gawk like an idiot later. Now there are things to do and facts to determine and he doesn't have the time for this. First he needs to know the date, the year. Then he needs to start tracking Greengrass. Nodding to himself, he glances left and right and picks up his two magically expanded bags, checking them for damage. Then, satisfied with their state, he starts following the dirty road down, hoping he would encounter something useful soon. A Street sign perhaps.

He doesn't – instead he soon finds a discarded newspaper, lying in the gutter not far from a near by alcove. Somewhat gingerly he checks it out, grimacing at the dirt and it's soggy, moist state, but more because of how it makes it difficult to read, rather than because of any sense of cleanliness. The dirt, at first, makes it impossible to tell the day of print, and the articles are completely beyond help.

"Eighteen eighty something, March," he mutters, after managing to clean the paper somewhat, and lets the soggy paper fall to the ground again. It is something – and puts the amount of his time travelling somewhere between hundred and twenty to hundred and thirty years. There's no telling how old the paper is, of course, but he doubts it is older than month at most. If it was, he doubts there would've been much left of it by now, with the street being so dirty.

Straightening his back again, he continues his way down the street, thinking back to what he knows about the eighteen eighties. He knows that some famous wizards and witches are born, while others die in the decade, but as far as historical events go, not much happens in the magical world. Dumbledore was born eighteen eighty one though – which is somewhat weird idea if he had ever had one, Dumbledore being a child.

While thinking about it and wondering if nothing really happened in the decade or if his research into it had been too lazy, Harry continues along the street as it slopes vaguely down. He smells the water and smoke before the docks come into view, and as he finds himself on a somewhat dirty river's shoreline, he looks around himself once more.

"Well, that's… something," he mutters, as his eyes widening as they land on to the Tower Bridge. Now he at least knows where he is and that the river in front of him is indeed the Thames… but it is a dramatic way to find out. Scratching his neck absently, he eyed the unfinished monument for a long moment, in a sort of vague state of vertigo as what he knew it to look like and what it looked right then, with crude cranes standing on top and chains and ropes and ladders hanging everywhere, fought in his head.

He has never given it much thought, a big monumental thing like the Tower Bridge having been actually built at some point, but looking the still unfinished construction, he supposes it made sense that it must've been. And not just were things he knew from the future being build – but some of the probably hadn't been even thought of yet. As he turns away, gripping his bags a bit tighter, he wonders what other changes he has to look forward to – what over dramatic differences.

It is more the sensation of the anticipation rising than the anticipation itself that makes him walk a little faster – it's another emotion that he has not felt in a long while.

After floundering among the docks for a good hour or so, he manages to find himself in more familiar territory. As he made his way down yet another street and towards Charing Cross road, he eyed the people who passed by with faint relief and satisfaction. His clothing had been picked by using somewhat vague references and style, trying to fit somewhere between the eighteen fifties and early nineteen hundreds, and it was good to see that they didn't seem too out of place. He would still need to get some more fitting clothing and soon, he supposed, but for now what he had would do.

The buildings here are more familiar – the same old buildings, even if somewhat newer, as the ones he remembers from the future. He has to resort less to the street signs and more to his own memory, as he walks down the road, clutching to his bags and glancing around until he finds what he is looking for – Leaky Cauldron, looking very nearly exactly as it did in the future. His shoulders slumping slightly with relief, he pushed on ahead and then inside.

By the looks of it, the place had never changed – even the tables are the same he remembers from future, though maybe little less scratched, burnt and patched together. The people looked like they hadn't changed in several hundred of years of course – but then, wizarding fashion hasn't changed in couple of hundred of years as far as he knew, anyway. He can rely on that, at least, he muses to himself while going forward and through the hall, ignoring the looks the people give him as he heads to the back and towards the exit to Diagon Alley.

He has a vault to set up under a false name and gold to exchange to galleons and, after he would've have money for a room, he can leave his belongings in the Leaky Cauldron and get to work. There is a timeline to preserve and only so much time to waste.

x

Tracking down Daphne Greengrass is, in the end, easy, though it helps that he gets couple hours worth of head start and she emerges in the past _after_ he does, rather than later. After he sets up in a rented room at Leaky Cauldron, it is only the matter of setting up some instruments that are designed to monitor the timeline – nothing like what the Department of Mysteries in the future has, but enough to sense any and all disruptions in the Prime Timeline. When the disruption occurs, it is rather like tracking down ripples in pond surface, though – after the initial splash, their direction is easier to see than their origin.

Harry has spent good seven years hunting people down, and five of those years he has carried the name of being the best in the department for a damn good reason, though. And it is not just that he had access to good equipment – what he has here is definitely not _good_. Mostly it is simple logic and common sense, and it is logic rather than the tracking device that make finding the witch so simple.

Like him, Greengrass makes Diagon Alley her first destination – and she is not expecting company judging by the ease with which he grabs her in the back alley, petrifying, disillusioning her and wrapping her in invisibility cloak before levitating her into his room. It is almost disappointing how quickly it is done – but then, he is a _hitwizard_, and grabbing people is what he does best.

"I don't know who you are and what you're up to, but trust me when I say this – you don't know who you're dealing with!" Greengrass spats, after he's bound her into a chair standing on top of a rune seal that suppresses magical power and then released her from her petrification. "I have in my disposal spells and devices you have never even dreamt of, and if you release me right now I promise you –"

"You promise I, what, die quickly, painlessly, not at all?" Harry asks, walking into her view and making her jaw drop with surprise. "Hello Greengrass," he greets her, pulling a chair for himself and sitting down in front of her. "Nice of you to drop by. Sorry about the rough handling. You know how these things work."

She gapes, her mouth hanging loosely open for a long moment. "Potter? Harry Potter?" she finally asks in breathless disbelief. "What the hell…?"

"You didn't think you could just slink back in time and not have anyone notice, did you?" he asks, amused despite himself. "The Department of Mysteries tracks these things down, you know, and they've been doing it a long while. You'd be surprised how many people there are who think that they can just go back and do whatever they like with no regard to the timeline."

"Department of – you can't be seriously telling me _you're_ an Unspeakable?" Greengrass says, giving him a suspicious look.

Harry shrugs his shoulders, pushing his glasses slightly higher on his nose. Unspeakables tend to give people the mental images of either spell researchers or some sort of secret agents. He's really neither – he was from the beginning just a trouble shooter, doing stuff most Unspeakables didn't have the gall or guts to do. The dirty work.

"So, you're here, what? To bring me back?" she asked, and kicked the leg of her chair. "Typical. Here I try to do something good for once and you stupid busybody know it alls just have to stick your noses into things –"

"I'm not here to bring you back – I'm here to kill you, Greengrass," Harry answers honestly, making her cut her speech short. "There is no way to travel forward in time – aside from the old fashioned way of second by second. When people like you go back in time, they send people like me to deal with you – and trust me, there has been enough many of your sort to give my sort enough of an idea about what we need to do. But do tell me about this _something good for once_ that you were going to do."

"Kill me?" she asks, quiet and serious. Then a complicated expression flashes over her face, and for a moment she looks like she's about to argue, belittle, laugh, probably sneer. Something about Harry's face stops her, and she slumps down with a sigh, staring at him with dismay and disgust. "You're really here to kill me."

"And minimize the damage you might've caused – though I doubt you have managed to do much, seeing that it's been only about half an hour," Harry says, shrugging his shoulders.

"Typical, just typical," she mutters again, this time quiet. Then she narrows her eyes. "But what about you – if it is really impossible to go forward in time, does that mean you will die too?"

"Eventually. I will live out my life in this time, and if nothing else kills me then I suppose old age will do its job sooner or later," the hitwizard answers. She gives him a suspicious, disbelieving look and he shakes his head. "It's what waits every operative send back in time – and don't think I don't know you're stalling."

"Like you wouldn't, after hearing that you're in the presence of a man sent to kill you," she answers, leaning her head back and sighing heavily. "Shit," she then says, kicking the floor in barely suppressed anger. "This is just… just typical," she mutters and then glares at him. "Is there anything I can do to make you not kill me?"

"No," Harry answers honestly. "If I don't, the vows I swore before coming will kill me."

"Vows. Of course," she spats and just stares at him with hateful eyes for a long moment. "You've changed, Potter. Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived – the golden boy. You've really changed."

"Time does that. I'd say you've changed too, but I don't really know what you used to be like so there is not much of material to compare you to," he admits, glancing her up and down. Like him, she wears muggle clothing – and judging by them, she had planned ahead too. She wears a dark red dress fitting of the period and judging by her waist, she even has a corset. She wears the dress well too, though the careful way with which her hair is arranged probably has something to do with it. "Tell me your plan," he says, lifting his eyes up again. She must've had one, if she prepared to fit in with the time period and all.

"So that you can write your report like a good boy?" Greengrass asks angrily and kicks the floor again. "And why do you think I even had one, maybe I'm off my head and travelled back in time for shit and giggles?"

"I don't think so, not with that get up. You planned. But if you're not going to talk willingly, I can force it out of you," he answers and unbuttons the front of his coat. She gives him an uneasy look and then relaxes as, instead of keeping on undressing he reaches for his inner pocket, pulling out a clear crystal phial.

"Veritaserum. How… predictable," she says, giving the small bottle a look. "That can be beaten, you know. All it takes is practice – and I was one of professor Snape's better students. I know how to make that."

"I'm sure. But Veritaserum, a compulsion, a neat little circle to prevent magic and Legilimency combined… well, it takes something special to beat that," Harry answers easily. "And if that doesn't do the trick, then I can throw an Imperio on top of everything and then I'll have you singing like a canary." At her surprised look, he smiles. "I've been doing this a couple of years. Not _this_, obviously this is my first and last time travelling back in time like this, but I've done interrogations before."

"So I see," Greengrass says uneasily, shifting in her chair and dragging the toes of her shoes back and forth along the floor in indecision. "I suppose it would be easier to give in and tell you, then?"

"Probably, yes. Also," Harry glances down to her feet. "You won't be able to break the circle. I didn't draw it – it's spelled and not going anywhere."

"Damn you," she answers, but stops her attempts of kicking and disrupting the circle. "Fine, I'll tell you," she then says, leaning back. "How much do you know about wizarding eugenics? Or, as it is, the selective breeding of the purebloods?"

"Only that it produces loads of idiots," Harry answers, tilting his head curiously. That was not what he had been expecting. "What about it?"

"Right now there isn't one. Not the way we know," Greengrass says. "Right now it's all hit and miss marriages as far a blood goes, and usually people get engaged more because of politic and monetary reasons, rather than due to blood. And right now, no one is trying to limit birth rates, because the mortality rates of infants and small children even with wizards are still relatively high, and no family with any sense relies on a single heir."

"Alright," Harry nods. That is news to him, but he has never really been interested in the breeding history of purebloods. "I suppose there is something special about this all, then?"

"Do you know what is the state of the purebloods in our time?" Greengrass asks, looking angry and then shaking her heads. "Well, of course you don't, hanging about with blood traitors like Weasleys – and I suppose I should say, _most_ purebloods." She scoffs. "In our time most purebloods are physically incapable of having more children than one – two if they are very lucky. _Physically incapable_."

"That is tragic, absolutely tragic," Harry says flatly. It sounded like luck to him – less Malfoys there were, better for everyone.

"It is, actually," she answers, looking angry. "And it's not just that they are incapable of having more children, but due to the fact that thanks to their selective breeding and rigorously controlled birth rates, the bloodlines are deteriorating. There is simply too much crossbreeding with families that just about every pureblood is related to each other."

"And they keep marrying each other regardless and everyone who knows anything about history knows how bad it is when cousins marry," the man muses, now starting to see her point – and realise what was motivating her. It had been the scoop of the century, when the heir of the Malfoy line – Draco Malfoy's son – had been found a squib. And the mother of that squib heir was, as it happened, was the younger sister of the woman in front of Harry. "Well well well," he murmurs, smiling faintly.

She glares at him. "Yes," she agreed. "My sister had a squib son. It is as much the fault of our family as it is of Malfoy family – in attempt of forcing my mother to produce another child so that he could have a male heir, my father drained my mother of all her power. Astoria was born weak, fragile, she barely survived. Draco Malfoy's family on other hand has been enforcing their contraception spells for couple of generations now – he turned very nearly sterile the moment Scorpius was born."

"Must've stung, that," Harry says softly, a smile playing in her lips. "So you're here to try and, what? Stop purebloods from enforcing their selective breeding laws? Just so that your family name won't be soiled in the future?"

"Don't be an idiot – if I wanted that, I would've merely gone back some handful of years and stopped my sister's marriage," she scoffed. "Scorpius isn't the problem. The problem is the fact that he is no where near the only one. Pansy Parkinson's daughter is a squib too – though they are hiding it pretty well – and it looks like Millicent will have either a squib or just plain deformed child. And it is a safe bet that any child I will have won't be healthy either– especially not if I marry a pureblood. Which is what my father was planning for me."

"Ah," the hitwizard hummed, folding his arms. "And knowing all this, what was your plan? To stop the selective breeding?"

"No. There was never any way I could prevent the notion from becoming fashionable – or that if I managed it once, it would never come up again," Greengrass answered with a grimace. "No, I planned to make sure that it would never work. The contraceptive spells, potions, all of it. I was planning to neutralise them before they became popular."

"And how would you do that – by feeding every pureblood with antidote?" Harry asks, amused.

"And feeding them as many fertility potions as I could manage to make," she nods.

Harry snorts at that. "What a plan," he says.

Greengrass glares at him, a little more heated. "You don't see it, do you Potter?" she asks. "It's not just that purebloods are born squibs, it's much bigger than that. Imagine what would happen if they all died out, every pureblood family in Britain. The Malfoy family runs most of the free market, the Goyles, as stupid as they are, own most of the potions ingredient industry – the Bulstrodes practically own the entire St. Mungos. And it's just the tip of the iceberg. And most of them are too proud to arrange their affairs favourably, or ensure that what they are doing now will be done by someone else later. If they all died out, the British economy would collapse."

"I rather doubt that," Harry answers. "When one business falls, another rises to its place. Even if they run this or that industry or market, it doesn't mean that the market can't run without them."

"And if they all go at once – or very nearly?" she snorts, looking away. "It's not just economy, but there is the politics too, diplomacy. Pureblood politics, as unsightly as they may seem, are important in grand scheme of things and the aristocracy of Britain give it some power that it might otherwise lack. Wipe away that and what are we but a nation of halfbloods and muggleborns? How long would it take after that for the traditions to fall and fail under the force of new ideas the muggleborns bring?"

"And that would be a bad idea, why?"

"Because magic draws its power from tradition, from belief and faith," she answers, giving him a look. "If you're smart enough to work for the Department of Mysteries, you must know why magic works the way it does – and that it doesn't have as much to do with the letters or spelling of a charm or enchantment, as it has with the history standing behind it."

Harry says nothing to that – because he does know. Even when Hogwarts had had the worst staff of teachers in history, it had still been the prime school of magic in the world simply because it was the oldest – because even with bad teachers, the students grew more powerful and skilful just by being in the castle grounds. That was why it was rare for new spells to rise or to gain popularity, and why just about all of them were in foreign, usually dead, languages.

"History, tradition, time, practice is what makes a normal spell a powerful one. When, how, who and how much it has been used," Greengrass says determinately. "It is the same with wizards. As much as you blood traitors and halfblooded scoff at it, in normal situations purebloods are stronger magically – the history of their families, their family trees, makes them stronger. We just didn't see it in our time because the selective breeding fucked it all up."

Harry hums at that, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. It was true, though. Take a weak witch of an inbred family like the Gaunts with their long history and traditions – and throw her genes together with the genes of an old muggle family, former aristocrats with nearly as long family tree. Fresh blood, fresh family history, and voila. Strongest dark lord in couple of centuries. Still inbred and twisted as hell, but strong.

"So really," Greengrass says. "I'm only doing the British magical world a favour. I'm saving it from its inevitable decline and extinction."

"From my point of view, you're doing no favours," he answers flatly. "Purebloods of Britain, barring few rare exceptions, have never done much good for anyone. If they went extinct it would only be a good thing – less gits and assholes in the world."

"Even if among those families who joined the selective breeding are names such as the Potters, the Longbottoms, the Lovegoods…?" Greengrass asks with a sardonic smile and raises her eyebrows at him. "Your grandparents parents were both so heavily spelled it took them nearly forty years of marriage and trying and conception potions to manage to produce your father. Your parents had better luck because your mother was a muggleborn, but I doubt your father would've managed another child. I wonder how many you manage. Maybe two, if you're lucky."

"I had myself sterilised – I won't be having any kids, ever," Harry says to that, but he can't help but frown because… because what had been a logical, necessary sacrifice, now seems like something completely different.

"And so the Potter family goes extinct. Good job, Potter," Greengrass snorts. "At this rate the only family left will be the Weasleys. Brilliant."

"They never entered the selective breeding, I suppose," Harry muses and she snorts again, this time in agreement. "The pureblood families rouse from some were," he says eventually. "Even if all the purebloods died now, new families would pop up. How many generations it takes for half bloods or muggleborns marrying each other before they're considered pureblood?"

The woman laughs bitterly at that. "Yes, and then it would take something like five centuries before it would make any difference – and I wonder how much of the magic you and I know would still be in use then? The generations of the twenty first century are already weaker than before – and will get weaker. In fifty year, sixty after our time, there won't be a wizard strong enough to transfigure a chair, let alone do something more powerful."

"You really think it works like that?" Harry asks. "My mother, a muggleborn, was one of the strongest witches of her generation. Same with Hermione Granger."

"Wrong. They were _clever_ witches, intelligent ones. They weren't strong," Greengrass answers. "If you and your mother at the peak of her power fought, you'd beat her every time with simplest of your spells. Same with your late Miss Granger, and all the other muggleborns, regardless of how brilliant they might be."

Harry says nothing, just eyes her until she snorts. "Trust me, Potter, I spent years researching this, experimenting and testing. I know the facts. I am not saying what the Dark Lord did – muggleborns aren't filth or stealers of magic, they are necessity, magic's way of refreshing the bloodlines, of flushing out impurities that came up. But the bloodlines themselves are the key to power," Greengrass says with complete conviction.

"That doesn't make what you want to do the right thing," Harry answers. "You're tampering with timeline, you know. Whatever motivations you have, the act itself damns you."

"How, exactly? All I want to do is assure that there are more magical children – I don't want to kill anyone, or prevent someone's birth, I know better than that. I want to make _more_, not _less_," she spats.

"And if one of those children killed your own grandmother, for example?" Harry asks, raising his eyebrows at her as she struggled against the ropes binding her to the chair. "Or say one of those children grew up to become a dark lord who eradicated entire bloodlines, entire towns and cities?"

"It couldn't happen," she answers, and gives him a look. "I studied time travel, you know, I did my research. Timeline flexes around things like these, and then goes around them."

"I don't think it's that simple. What you are doing could undo the timeline as whole."

"Do you really think that human actions could ever affect something as powerful as _time_? All I am doing, all I want to do, is throw rocks at the steam. There will be a splash, some ripples, and then one more stone in the bottom – but the stream will go on, relatively undisturbed, and give it a moment and you can't even tell something happened. That is time – and that is about how big an impact we have on it," Greengrass says, kicking the leg of her chair again in irritation.

Harry blinks slowly at that, recalling his own thought about how tracking down time travel was rather like tracking ripples on a pond. "You know about the elasticity of the timeline, but you don't know that it's impossible to go forward in time?" he asks somewhat amusedly.

"I know it's not possible according to anything any normal people know," she answered irritably. "But the Department of Mysteries has the habit of discovering things and then not telling anyone that they did for about fifty to hundred years. I didn't think they'd sent someone like you back in time unless they knew how to pull you back." She trails away and then smirks. "I think whoever sent you here didn't want you around, Potter."

He shakes his head a little at that and then eyes her seriously. "Well. Whichever way it is, none of this changes anything," he says finally. "I will still have to kill you. And undo any damage you might've caused."

Greengrass sighs heavily and slumps down. "Right, well. I didn't get to do anything," she mutters spitefully. "So you will have it easy."

"I suppose I will," the wizard says, just watching her. She looks honestly deflated, disappointed in way that makes her entire body weaken. Like all power had drained from her. "Out of curiosity," he says slowly. "How did you intend to go about it? Just stalking people, attacking them in dark alleys and force feeding them the potions…?"

"No, of course not. I planned to set myself as a minor pureblood and then hold plenty of parties – or if that didn't work, then try and get a job at restaurant or an inn or something. Some sort of position where I'd be in charge of some measure of catering within the magical society. Then I would feed the necessary potions in foods and drinks," she answers with a sigh. "Best option would've been to work in the ministry cafeteria – lot of purebloods eat there daily."

"Hm. Not bad," Harry murmurs. "And the potions, do you already have them, or did you plan to brew them later?"

"I have some, others I intended to brew," Greengrass says, and nods her chin towards her bosom. "I have everything shrunken in a locket around my neck."

Harry nods slowly, contemplating it while she hangs her head in defeat. The plan, to him, still seems like lunacy. But there is something there – the long forgotten dream of cousins and aunts and uncles from the magical side of his family, the old wishes of the boy living in the cupboard under the staircase that a relative would come and save him. Relative who had never came – who didn't exist because Harry himself was the last Potter left.

Thinking about that made him wonder about others who were the last of their line. Sirius, though… "The last generation of the Black family had two sons – and Draco Malfoy's mother is one of three sisters, all from Black family," he notes idly.

"They were another family who didn't join the selective breeding or limit their birth–rates," Greengrass sighs. "Too proud of being married to every other family to stop making connections, I guess. Not that it matters since they're all dead or married off. They kept the bloodlines of several families going longer than they would've without them, though."

"Hmm. Well," Harry sighs and stands up. "I suppose it doesn't matter at this point," he says and steps in front of her. "Any last requests, Daphne?"

"I don't suppose there is a way to send message back to the future?" she asks.

"There's the goblins – for fee they hold boxes for several decades and deliver them to whoever they're intended for when the time comes," he answers. "That's how Department of Mysteries gets the reports from people like me."

"I'd like to leave a letter to my sister, if you don't mind."

Harry considers it. "Why not," he then says, figuring that there's probably no harm. He will have it delivered week or so after Greengrass' jump back in time and so, by the time Astoria Malfoy would get her sister's letter, there will be nothing she can do.

Greengrass dictates her letter – which explains and apologises for her disappearance, as well as works as her will with whatever little things she had left back in the future. After Harry has written it and sealed it with her signet ring, he sets it aside and approaches her, asking her a preferred method to go.

"Painless poison, if you have any – if not, then cutting hex to the heart, and make it powerful and precise," she says, leaning back, trying not to look nervous or terrified and failing badly. "What…" she starts, then swallows and tries again. "What will you do with my things?"

"Go through them, destroy some and keep others, I imagine," Harry answers, reaching out and taking the charmed locket holding her possessions off her neck. He will go with the cutting hex – he has no poisons that would do the trick quickly, so the hex will be the least painful way to go – and he doesn't want the locket to get caught in between.

"I don't suppose you would bother to have my more personal effects and gold sealed in the box with my letter, by any chance?" she asks, her voice wavering a little.

"I'll see what I can do. I doubt I will have much use for it," he admits, opening the front of her dress and then placing the wand tip over her chest – over her heart.

"You better get it right. I don't want to linger," she whispers, closing her eyes. A tear trails down her pale cheek, but she doesn't sob, only draws a shuddering breath and waits.

"I won't miss," he promises and holds her shoulder almost gently to keep her still.

x

After relieving her of anything valuable and transfiguring her body into something easier to carry – that won't start to smell anytime soon – Harry goes through Greengrass' belongings like he had promised. She had prepared well, but not like he had – lot of the things she had brought were out of their time, things that wouldn't be invented in years like moving photographs and charmed music players and such. She also has several books that won't be printed in ninety years, which he knows he will have to destroy or mask if he wants to keep them.

All of her books are about eugenics, lineages or potions – and her own personal notebook is full of recipes of potions she hadn't bothered to bring with her in printed form. All the potions are there, fertility potions and the antidote – which is actually not an antidote but a type of vaccination that would make the drinker immune to certain potions ingredients. She also has with her plenty of ingredients as well as several ready phials of the fertility potions and couple of the antidote, both marked as "to drink, nothing with sugar or lime".

She also had with her gold, but not like Harry. She had galleons and sickles, which give Harry something of a problem because according to the serial numbers some of them wouldn't be cast in some decades. He can't use them or present them to goblins without making an incident and he can't melt them either because of the charms in them. He ends up keeping them – in fifty years or so, if he's still alive, maybe he will use them.

Before starting to arrange the matter of the Gringotts box, Harry deals with the body. It is a simple affair of releasing the transfiguration and then burning the corpse where no one can see. He can't cremate her properly, too many legalities and risks involved, but Fiendfyre does the trick wonderfully, flickering out of existence under his orders, leaving behind just enough ash to be sealed into a jar.

He ends up putting most of Greengrass' things into the Gringotts box with the letter and her ashes, except for some things that wouldn't make much difference like clothing and such. The books and potions and her notes he obviously keeps – though he rips and destroys or blacks out all the dates, and puts everything under security charms that would make them illegible to everyone but him, just in case. With the books packed and the clothing stuffed away amidst his other belongings in case he might one day have use for them, he is finished and for all the world to see it was like Daphne Greengrass had never graced the eighteen–hundreds with her presence.

And just like that, he has nothing more to do as far as his mission goes anyway. Nothing, but sort himself out, make himself a place to live and then just do that, _live_ out his life under the orders of his seal and eventually die away.

It seems like simple deal, easy enough to handle. He has enough gold to get himself a mansion and legion of servants, enough money to buy himself prestige and whatever else he might want. But, like with most things, he doesn't really care enough to bother, and instead of starting to look into a house, he pays for a week at the Leaky Cauldron, and does what he has been doing for most of the last decade and will do for the rest of his life.

He kills time.

xx

This might be continued - I planned it as Sherlock Holmes (the 2009 movie) crossover. However the next part has been very difficult with me, so consider this finished until further notice because I might not be able to continue it. I'm posting this now instead of trying to finish the story first in hopes that comments and such might give me an inspiration boost, sometimes they do, but I don't hold any high hopes. Which is kind of pity because I actually had a plot planned.

Oh, and if I do manage to continue, it will be slash. So there.

My apologies for possible grammar errors and such.


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